Hand-calligraphed Certificate of Appreciation to a Circus Orchestra Director
Petrograd: 1923. Very good. Item #21427 .
Single sheet of heavy wove paper 13 by 18 inches with blue, red, green and gold calligraphy congratulating the circus orchestral director on twenty years of service.
Addressed to Dear Colleague Stanislav Martinovich Novitsky from the Guild (Collective) of Circus Workers, and signed by what appears to be all of the performers and workers of the circus.
The St. Petersburg Circus was founded by an Italian immigrant, Gaetano Cinzelli (Chinzelli) in 1877. Even though Cinzelli died in 1881, his family continued to manage the circus until the October Revolution of 1917. It is still performing today.
We are unable to decipher the names of the performers, except for one, which appears on the left margin near the bottom: G. Chinzelli, probably a grandson, possibly the son, of the founder.
There are three horizontal folds in the certificate, a little roughness around the edges, and some light soil and offsetting from the gold, but this is a very good example of post-Revolutionary Cyrillic calligraphy.
In Russian.
Price: $400.00